Search results for ""author alex callinicos""
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Imperialism and Global Political Economy
In Imperialism and Global Political Economy Alex Callinicos intervenes in one of the main political and intellectual debates of the day. The global policies of the United States in the past decade have encouraged the widespread belief that we live in a new era of imperialism. But is this belief true, and what does ‘imperialism’ mean? Callinicos explores these questions in this wide-ranging book. In the first part, he critically assesses the classical theories of imperialism developed in the era of the First World War by Marxists such as Lenin, Luxemburg, and Bukharin and by the Liberal economist J.A. Hobson. He then outlines a theory of the relationship between capitalism as an economic system and the international state system, carving out a distinctive position compared to other contemporary theorists of empire and imperialism such as Antonio Negri, David Harvey, Giovanni Arrighi, and Ellen Wood. In the second half of Imperialism and Global Political Economy Callinicos traces the history of capitalist imperialism from the Dutch East India Company to the specific patterns of economic and geopolitical competition in the contemporary era of American decline and Chinese expansion. Imperialism, he concludes, is far from dead.
£20.19
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Against Postmodernism: A Marxist Critique
It has become an intellectual commonplace to claim that we have entered the era of 'post-modernity'. Three themes are embraced in this claim - the poststructuralist critique by Foucault, Derrida and others of the philosophical heritage of the Enlightenment, the supposed impasse of the High Modern art and its replacement by new artistic forms, and the alleged emergence of 'post-industrial' societies whose structures are beyond the ken of Marx and other theorists of industrial capitalism. Against Postmodernism takes issue with all these themes. It challenges the idealist irrationalism of poststructuralism. It questions the existence of any radical break separating Post-modern from Modern art. And it denies that recent socio-economic developments represent any fundamental shift from classical patterns of capital accumulation. Drawing on philosophy and cultural history, Against Postmodernism takes issue with some of the most forthright critics of post-modernism - Jurgen Habermas and Frederic Jameson, for example. But it is most distinctive in that it offers a historical reading of these theories. Post-modernism, Alex Callinicos argues, reflects the disappointed revolutionary generation of '68, and the incorporation of many of its members into the professional and managerial 'new middle class'. It is best read as a symptom of political frustration and social mobility rather than as a significant intellectual or cultural phenomenon in its own right.
£16.99
John Wiley and Sons Ltd The New Age of Catastrophe
The world is entering a new age of catastrophe. The exceptional is becoming normal. The last such crisis, between 1914 and 1945, witnessed two world wars, the Great Depression, and the Holocaust. Now humankind faces fresh existential threats – the COVID-19 pandemic, wildfires, floods and other extreme weather events caused by accelerating climate change, and the danger of nuclear war in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. These threats, argues Alex Callinicos, have their common source in a multidimensional crisis of the capitalist system, which is hitting the buffers, hurling us towards societal collapse. It embraces the increasing destruction of nature and the degradation of labour, a world economy stagnant since the global financial crisis, and escalating inter-imperialist conflicts between the United States, China, and Russia. So far, the main political beneficiary has been the far right, which may capture the White House again. But the new age of catastrophe is also an age of revolt. Following on from Black Lives Matter, the #MeToo protests, and the revolts in Sudan, Sri Lanka, and Iran, multiple faultlines in the system will provoke still more mass movements that can challenge myriad forms of oppression and open the way to a just and sustainable world.
£17.99